Some of the stories we covered on this April 10 Edition of "Gulf Coast Mornings with Kelly Bennett and Uncle Henry":
It's going to be a busy weekend along our coast. Spring Break weekend, when tens of thousands of college-age visitors descend on Biloxi for the weekend, is upon us in a few days, but innkeepers report this weekend shows only a fraction of the number of reservations seen in years past. However, motorists on U.S. 90 on Thursday will see Biloxi's Public Works Department setting up traffic cones in the center lanes of U.S. 90 between I-110 and DeBuys Road. Workers will spend most of the day Thursday, from around 9:30 to about 5:30 p.m., setting up the cones, which are part of the city's traffic plan for Spring Break. That's when city leaders unveiled a traffic plan that, if fully implemented, limits U.S. 90 to righthand lanes, eastbound and westbound, with left lanes restricted to emergency vehicles. In some instances, turns are prohibited at intersections to keep traffic flowing, and, if police see traffic nearing gridlock traffic is "vented," or forced to travel as far away as Interstate 10. There are actually two known sites of Spring Break. One is the Coast Coliseum, while the other, a few blocks west of the Coast Coliseum, on private property, has traditionally focused on renting parking spaces in vacant fields, promoted as "Park-n-Play" locations.
C-Spire is erecting a COW - the acronym for "cellular on wheels" - in front of Edgewater Mall to help accommodate expected incease in cellphone usage this weekend.
See the Spring Break traffic plan
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The unofficial results for councilmember of Ward 2 in Pascagoula are in.
- Felix “FeFe” Fornett received 204 votes.
- Melanie A. Martin received 138 votes.
Fornett will replace former council member George Wolverton, who passed away in February.
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The Saints are out with their 2019 preseason schedule. They'll open up the preseason at home for the first time since 2013, hosting the Minnesota Vikings at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. They'll hit the road in week two and travel to Los Angeles, where they'll face the Chargers before they travel northeast to the Meadowlands of New Jersey to play the New York Jets at Metlife Stadium. To close out the preseason, the Saints will return home to host the Miami Dolphins before the final roster cuts are made.
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Construction contractors now have more leeway to hire law enforcement to help protect those working on the state's roads and highway. Governor Phil Bryant affixed his signature to a law referred to as the "blue-light bill." It's expected to lead to more police cars being staged at road construction zones with their blue lights flashing to further alert drivers that they need to slow down. House Bill 580 also mandates heftier fines for violators, a first offense costing up to 250-dollars.
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You'll have to travel to Hattiesburg to visit the best zoo in Mississippi. So says Reader's Digest in a just published article "The Best Zoo in Every State in America." A major draw to the Hattiesburg Zoo is said to be the Sloth Experience. The zoo first opened its gates on Easter Sunday 1950 and is rated by TripAdvisor as the Hub City's top attraction.
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The space community is excited for the release of the first-ever photograph of a black hole. It will be unveiled today by the National Science Foundation at a news conference at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. The images will come from the Event Horizon Telescope, an international effort using eight linked radio observatories around the world. Black holes are collapsed stars whose gravity is so powerful that not even light can escape.